Control-M Product Report - bmc. · PDF fileThe product was acquired from New Dimension...

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©TrustRadius Inc. 2016

Control-M Product ReportBased on 62 end-user reviews and ratings of Control-M on TrustRadiusFirst published September 2016

Curated from End-User Reviews on:

© 2016 TrustRadius. All rights reserved. This publication has been licensed by BMC. Reproduction or sharing of this publication in any form without TrustRadius’ prior written permission is strictly prohibited.

Table of Contents

About This Report .............................................................................................................. 3

Control-M Product Summary ..........................................................................................4Why IT workload automation? ................................................................................................................ 4Control-M Product Details ....................................................................................................................... 4Best Fit For / Customer Demographics ................................................................................................ 7

Summary of Control-M User Feedback .........................................................................8Strengths ...................................................................................................................................................... 8Areas for Improvement ...........................................................................................................................12

Aggregate User Ratings of Control-M on TrustRadius ............................................ 15

BMC Company Details and Product Deployment Options .................................. 16

This publication has been licensed by BMC. Reproduction or sharing of this publication in any form without TrustRadius’ prior written permission is strictly prohibited. For information on reprints, please contact [email protected]. TrustRadius is a trademark of T-Radius Holdings, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. TrustRadius disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information and shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in such information. This publication consists of the opinions of TrustRadius’ research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

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About This Report

Why read this report?This report is designed to help you make an informed decision about BMC’s workload automation solution, Control-M. It is based on 28 ratings and 34 in-depth user reviews of Control-M on TrustRadius, the trusted user review site for business software. This report includes analysis of the types of customers (company sizes, industries etc.) that use Control-M, what companies and users like most about the product, as well as areas for improvement.

Our methodologyTrustRadius invited a broad sample of the Control-M user base to review the product. Reviewers were encouraged to provide candid feedback and had the option to remain anonymous. Incentives were used to motivate response from a broad spectrum of customers. All reviewers were vetted by our research team to ensure that they were legitimate customers and that their feedback was authentic and unbiased.

https://www.trustradius.com/products/control-m/reviews

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Control-M Product Summary

(62)

8.6 out of 10

Why IT workload automation?Workload automation solutions like Control-M provide high-quality job scheduling and batch services to the business in the face of increasing IT and workload complexity. The modern IT environment has become increasingly difficult to manage, due to the advent of new technologies and trends including virtualization, cloud, big data, enterprise application silos, complex business process spanning multiple technologies and departments, and the pressure to provide real-time services to lines of business in an ever more competitive business environment.

From Scheduling to Workload AutomationWorkload scheduling tools have been used for years, from Unix and Linux’s CRON utility to Windows’ Task Scheduler. As IT and workload complexity evolved the tool limitations became more evident.

In addition to being the opposite of user-friendly, they can only use time as a criterion for scheduling, and are unsuitable for complex scheduling scenarios.

Workload automation tools like Control-M emerged to automate complex batch processing, not just according to time windows, but also taking into account the logical dependencies between jobs so that they run in the most logical sequence.

Control-M Product DetailsThe product was acquired from New Dimension Software in 1999, and was originally designed for IBM mainframe computers. It now runs on distributed platforms including Unix, Windows and Linux platforms.

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Control-M is BMC’s flagship product for workload automation and is designed to manage a broad range of scheduling and workload automation tasks across a complex IT infrastructure from a single point of control. ControlM schedules jobs and monitors processes as the jobs are executed, generating alerts and exceptions to allow corrective action to be taken when necessary.

Reviews on TrustRadius indicate that Control-M is highly effective at delivering against this value proposition.

Product ArchitectureControl-M has a standard three-tiered system architecture:

»» Enterprise Manager provides the graphical user interface and administration functions.

»» The Control-M Server is the schedule engine that provides job submission and tracking.

»» Control-M Agent runs on different machines to handle job submission requests from the server with control modules and agentless hosts. Agentless hosts allow jobs to be submitted and executed on computers that do not have a resident agent installed.

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Control-M Plug-insControl-M plug-ins are essential for cross-platform scheduling within different applications. They allow jobs to be scheduled across multiple platforms, databases, data warehouses, file transfers, and other applications. Some of the more than 30 Control-M plug-ins available out-of-the-box include:

»» Control-M for SAP

»» Control-M for PeopleSoft

»» Control-M for Oracle E-Business Suite

»» Control-M Managed File Transfer

»» Control-M for Databases

»» Control-M for Informatica

»» Control-M for IBM Cognos

In 2013, BMC introduced Control-M for Hadoop, which schedules jobs from the Hadoop processing platform to be incorporated into larger IT workflows. This module recognizes components from the entire Hadoop landscape, including Hadoop File System (HDFS), Pig, Scoop, Hive, MapReduce, Spark and more.

Additional capabilities extending the power of Control-M include:

»» Forecast and Batch Impact Manager monitor batch processes integrating with Remedy ITSM to trigger incident tickets.

»» Batch Discovery minimizes the impact of critical batch service problems and avoiding penalties for missing SLA targets.

»» Control-M Workload Change Manager automates application workflow creation.

»» Control-M Workload Archiving archives and delivers historical output and logs.

Control-M Application IntegratorControl-M provides a large number of packaged integration modules, but does not provide integration modules for all platforms. Control-M Application Integrator is a self-service web design tool that quickly integrates virtually any application, including homegrown applications, with the Control-M platform. It eliminates the need for coding and scripting outside of Control-M.

In the Control-M Application Hub community, customers and partners can share integrations they have built with other community members. This is the first such clearinghouse for workload applications integrations in the industry.

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Best Fit For / Customer DemographicsControl-M is a centralized batch-scheduling tool for organizations that have a large number of complex batch processes running across platforms on a number of different machines. Hence, Control-M is more likely to be a best fit for large organizations running complex processes, with a high number of dependencies, scheduling rules, and execution hosts. This is reflected by Control-M reviewers on TrustRadius, a majority of whom work at enterprises with over 1,000 employees. Organizations running large numbers of complex processes are typically banks, insurance companies, large manufacturing companies, large telecommunications companies, and other large, complex organizations. This is reflected in the reviewer industry breakdown on TrustRadius.

Mid-size(51-1,000 employees)Enterprise(1,000+ employees)

Company Size

36%

74%

15%

34%

15%

6%

9%

21%

Retail

Other

Insurance

Information Technology

Government Administration

Banking

User Department

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Summary of Control-M User Feedback

The following is a distillation of product strengths and areas for improvement from the 34 end-user reviews of Control-M on TrustRadius.

Strengths1. Centralized view across the enterpriseControl-M provides a centralized view of all jobs running across the entire enterprise, regardless of platform.

“Enterprise view regardless of platform. The ability to

see everything running on all Control-M is awesome

and the ability to trigger jobs on other platforms

provides even more flexibility.”

Analyst at a Human Resources companywith 10,001+ employeesApril 2016

“Centralized view of workflows across the

organization.”

Fabricio K.Production Analystat an Information Technology and Services Companywith 501-1,000 employeesJune 2016

Sean K.Senior Software Engineer

at a Banking companywith 501-1,000 employees

May 2016

“Gave our organization one view of all jobs running

in the organization including centralized alerting and

error handling processes.”

Carlos F.Enterprise Operations Analyst

at a Utilities companywith 501-1,000 employees

June 2016

“Helps us centralize monitoring of our batch process

via one GUI.”

http://www.trustradius.com/products/control-m/reviews

http://www.trustradius.com/products/control-m/reviews

https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/control-m-2016-04-13-09-26-48




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2. User friendly user interfaceUsers love the intuitive graphical user interface, which reduces training requirements, as well as the strong data drill-down capabilities.

“The scheduler interface is extremely user friendly,

even for users that are not familiar with other

job scheduling tools. We were able to implement

Control-M and do cross-training for a number of

departments. Users from other departments were

able to quickly learn the tools and see if their jobs

had completed successfully.”

Erin W.BI Developerat a Food Production companywith 10,001+ employeesOctober 2015

“Control-M provides an easy-to-use and easy-to-

interpret interface for users, with most of the screen

options and field names being self-explanatory.”

Technician in Information Technologyat a Government Administration companywith 10,001+ employeesJune 2016

Manager in Information Technologyat a Telecommunications company

with 10,001+ employeesJune 2016

“Easy to use - great interface reduces the errors

common using other command line schedulers.”

Sreedhar S.Systems Analyst

at an Information Technology and Services companywith 1,001-5,000 employees

June 2016

“Good GUI interface to drill down the failed jobs to

further troubleshoot or to notify the owners of the

jobs.”

3. Handling job dependenciesControl-M handles scheduled job dependencies across platforms very well.

“The ability to schedule jobs running on different

platforms and to create dependencies between those

jobs, which is something that was not easily done

with separate independent scheduling systems.”

Sean K.Senior Software Engineerat a Banking companywith 501-1,000 employeesMay 2016

DJ T.Senior Engineer

at an Aviation companywith 10,001+ employees

June 2016

“Control-M is good at scheduling jobs that have

dependencies across various servers and platforms.”







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“Job Dependencies: Control-M can be used in

sophisticated ways to link jobs - for example

embedding logic that decides what return code to

produce based on output from the job (e.g. look for

an error message in the job log)…It also easily allows

for combining various dependency types.”

Eugene L..NET Team Leadat an Insurance companywith 201-500 employeesMay 2016

Dave C.Senior System Administrator

at an Information Technology companywith 201-500 employees

July 2016

“Dealing with dependencies is handled very well.

Dependencies are easy to set up whether they are on

the same server or across platforms.”

4. Scheduling flexibilityControl-M scheduling capabilities provide fine-grained control over the job scheduling process.

“Once the job is scheduled to run either on a time

based dependency or on a predecessor/successor

dependency, it will take off accordingly. With a lot

of self-service options like scheduling to run an on

demand job etc., it is great tool to get the work done

without much dependency from other teams.”

Sreedhar S.Systems Analystat an Information Technology and Services companywith 1,001-5,000 employeesJune 2016

“Scheduling Flexibility. We have some very unique

schedules. For example: we run a job on the 2nd

Sunday after the 2nd Tuesday of the month.”

Engineer in Information Technologyat a Packaging company with 10,001+ employeesJune 2016

Ron B.Command Center Operator

at an IT and Insurance companywith 10,001+ employees

June 2016

“Control-M has excellent calendar functionality that

allows for detailed scheduling of jobs according to

many specifics (day, month, year, time, preds, and

several other conditions).”







5. Platform stabilityControl-M is a mature, stable product, which is tested and highly reliable.

“Control-M is very stable. It is rare to have any issues

with the application.”

Dave C.Senior System Administratorwith 201-500 employeesJuly 2016

“As it matures, the product gets better and more stable.”

Frankie L.Service Managementat a Banking companywith 5,001-10,000 employeesJune 2016

Zach W.Infrastructure Engineer

at an Insurance companywith 10,001+ employees

February 2016

“Control-M is stable, reliable, able to handle

extremely complex scenarios, and the customer

support is really fantastic.”

Sreedhar S.Systems Analyst

at an Information Technology and Services companywith 1,001-5,000 employees

June 2016

“Once the job is scheduled in Control-M, it is all set

to go on a regular basis. Very stable.”

6. Add-on ModulesReviewers are generally very happy with the add-on control modules for cross-platform job scheduling.

“AFT Module for Control-M. This module allows us to

communicate and integrate different applications.”

Pedro V.Head of Production Planningat an Oil and Gas companywith 10,001+ employeesJuly 2016 Team Lead in Information Technology

at a Health and Wellness companywith 5,001-10,000 employees

June 2016

“The Control-M modules are great.”








“The Control-M module for SAP is the greatest

thing ever. Takes very little setup and next thing

you know you are scheduling SAP jobs in Control-M

which provides you much more control than using

SM36/37.”

Analystat a Human Resources companywith 10,001+ employeesApril 2016 Mark F.

Senior Systems Analystat a Banking company

with 201-500 employeesJune 2016

“Control-M Advanced File Transfer is a very useful

add-on, allowing for a wide variety of file transfers

to be configured “out of the box” and then used

as part of the standard batch flow. This module is

not included in the base price but is available at a

relatively small additional cost.”

Areas for Improvement1. ReportingSeveral users feel that reporting capabilities do not work very well, and that pulling reports is cumbersome.

Note from vendor: Using the Control-M Reporting Facility, users can customize reports and automate to run reports on a set schedule. The Reporting Facility is available as an add-on in Control-M versions 7 and later.

“The reporting feature needs to be addressed. It’s still

a bit cumbersome to pull needed reports.”

Davon D.Senior Infrastructure Engineerat an Information Technology companywith 1,001-5,000 employeesJune 2016

“It would be great if we can get some good

customized reporting options to pull various reports.”

Sreedhar S.Systems Analystat an Information Technology and Services companywith 1,001-5,000 employeesJune 2016

Erin W.BI Developer

at a Food Production companywith 10,001+ employees

October 2015

“The reports seemed to be a bit clunky. I was never

really able to build reports that pulled the data I was

really looking for. ”







“The reporting provided with Control-M could have more functionality. Many users end up creating their own reporting

based on the Control-M DB. I believe BMC are addressing this.”

Mark F.Senior Systems Analystat a Banking companywith 201-500 employeesJune 2016

2. Version UpgradesVersion upgrades are challenging.

Note from vendor: The latest version of Control-M, version 9, allows for in-place upgrades to ease the challenge of upgrading from version to version.

“Migration/version upgrade is particularly difficult

and you need some downtime (and is much better

than other versions).”

Fabricio K.Production Analystat an Information Technology and Services Companywith 501-1,000 employeesJune 2016

“I would like to see improvements on the Control-M

migration process to new releases.”

Carlos F.Enterprise Operations Analystat a Utilities companywith 501-1,000 employeesJune 2016

Gadi B.System Programmer

at an Information and Technology companywith 1,001-5,000 employees

July 2016

“Installation and upgrades are a pain.”

3. DocumentationDocumentation could be improved overall.

Note from vendor: If any user needs additional help after using Control-M documentation and user guides, our industry leading customer support team is available 24/7 to provide individual assistance.






“As with most of the mainframe software products,

documentation seems to be the weak link for the

products - written by people and for people who

already know what they need to do, not for people

who are trying to figure how to use the product.”

Technician in Information Technologyat a Government Administration organizationwith 10,001+ employeesJune 2016

“I have found the BMC documentation for the

Control-M/Agent for Unisys OS2200, and their

documentation in general, hard to follow and at times

incomplete.”

DJ T.Senior Engineerat an Aviation companywith 10,001+ employeesJune 2016

Theo R.Applications Programmer

at an Institute of Higher Educationwith 10,001+ employees

June 2016

“Control-M documentation needs to include

examples with screen snapshots when describing a

particular scenario. What is the saying? “A picture

is worth a thousand words.” Also these snapshots

are very useful for users (like myself) that only have

view authorization for production Control-M job

definitions and that do not create job definitions in

development environment.”





Aggregate User Ratings of Control-M on TrustRadius

8.8 “Likelihood to Recommend” score Control-M is highly rated on TrustRadius, with a high “Likelihood to Recommend” score of 8.8, which is a high score for a complex IT product. Likewise, Control-M, also scores exceptionally well on usability, thanks to the well-designed GUI front-end.


BMC Company Details and Product Deployment Options

Company status Private

Customers 10,000+

Employees 6,000+

Location Houston, TX

Founded 1980

Deployment OptionsVirtual and Cloud ResourcesControl-M is deployed on-premises, running in the data center or on the cloud. Data center deployment can also be augmented by BladeLogic, VMware or Amazon EC2. If there are SLA breaches or sudden changes in workload volume, as detected by the Batch Impact Manager or other policies, Control-M jobs can request on-demand provisioning and decommissioning of virtual or cloud resources as needed.

DatabaseControl-M can be deployed on a BMC-provided database or a supported third-party database provided by the user’s organization. The database shipped with the product is PostgreSQL, which will be installed by default during installation. However, customers frequently use Oracle or MySQL since they are often already licensed by the organization.

ConfigurationThe three major components (Enterprise Manager, Server, and Agent) are installed first in any sequence. Once they have been successfully deployed, additional components such as the control modules and agentless remote host can be installed.

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